


Loneliness

by eskimita



Series: NCIS Drabbles [1]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode: s02e22 SWAK, Gen, Plague, Plague Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:35:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27617734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eskimita/pseuds/eskimita
Summary: The only thing worse than the plague was the recovery from the plague.
Series: NCIS Drabbles [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019193
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> I write a gay Tony DiNozzo. I will not apologize for that. It isn't very relevant to this fic but it is mentioned.

“Now breathe as deeply as you can,” the nurse instructed Tony, helping him sit up and hold the nebulizer to his mouth. Her voice was gentle, cajoling, not at all like Gibbs, who would have barked the order. He found that he missed his boss’s barked orders. Still, he breathed as deeply as he could. “Good. Hold that breath as long as possible.” 

Holding the breath was harder. His lungs burned just breathing deeply, and holding it was much worse, but he did it, counting Mississippis in his head. When he got to 45, he couldn’t hold it anymore, and he let it out slowly, because he’d been warned about letting it all out in one go. It wasn’t going to build up stamina if he let it all out in one go, wasn’t going to help his lungs heal at all. He wanted his lungs to heal, so he would listen to the nurses and physical therapists, and Dr. Brad, when he had time to come in and check on him. 

“Very good, Tony,” her praise was lilting, and it rubbed him the wrong way because it was nothing like the praise he received from his team for a job well done. That praise was always laced with sarcasm, like they didn’t actually mean it. He’d gotten used to questioning whether he’d earned praise or derision and hearing straight praise was something that made him squirm uncomfortably. Still, he nodded to her, weak smile in place as he fought back the urge to cough. 

He wanted to see Gibbs. He wanted Gibbs to come tell him that he was doing a good job, that he was healing right. But Gibbs hadn’t come to see him since he’d told Tony that he would live, that the plague wrecking his body was already dead, that he wasn’t allowed to die. His boss had done his job, ordered Tony to survive this, and high-tailed it out of the hospital like someone had set a fire to the soles of his feet. So had Kate, for that matter. 

Four weeks of this, of recovery and breathing exercises, of hospital food and late night saline switches. Four weeks of not seeing his apartment, of not being able to go to work, of not being able to do anything more straining than walk to the bathroom on his own. 

No one but Ducky and Palmer had come to visit him. 

Sure, McGee and Abby called, but when they called, they always brushed off his suggestion of a visit with excuses. 

“I have bowling tonight. You know Sister Rosita needs me. I carry the team, Tony.” 

“Well, actually, Tony, I’m in the middle of building a computer.” 

“I was going to, but then one of the nuns called.” 

“I was behind on my casework.” 

He didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t want to visit him in the hospital either, not after the way he’d treated them, after the way he’d treated everyone. He was the team asshole, after all, the one who harassed and annoyed everyone until they were so annoyed with him that the last thing they wanted was to be around him. They were probably happy to have been without him for the last four weeks. 

Kate was probably doubly so. Ah, yes. Kate. He owed her an apology, he’d already decided. For all the things he’d said to her, to purposefully make her uncomfortable, all the sexist things, all the immature and childish things, all the things to get a rise out of her. The plague had given him enough clarity of mind to see that he’d been grossly unfair to Kate, and he needed to make up for that wrong before it was too late, needed to make sure that she knew how much he appreciated her and her willingness to stay with him when he’d been actively dying. She hadn’t needed to, but she had, and he would never forget that. He would try to be better, for Kate. 

He knew why Gibbs hadn’t visited. The boss didn’t need to visit. That wasn’t his job. His job was to be the boss, to make sure that the team got their jobs done. His job wasn’t to hold their hands, to make sure that they felt better when they got runny noses, to make them tea. Sure, he’d asked Kate about her cold, but that was Kate. She was different. Tony was a big boy. He could handle himself. Gibbs was just proving to Tony that he knew that by staying away. He would probably expect Tony back at his desk as soon as he passed a physical evaluation too. It might be why he was pushing himself so hard. He couldn’t disappoint the boss. 

It was lonely, sitting in a hospital room by himself, nothing but his own thoughts to distract him. He didn’t even have any of his DVDs. No one had thought to ask if he needed anything from his apartment, and he wasn’t going to inconvenience Ducky or Palmer like that. So he’d stared at the same blank walls all day, every day. For 28 days. Not that he’d been counting. Not that the past month hadn’t been the most excruciating month of his entire life. And that counted the month he’d spent in the ‘brig’ when he’d been at RIMA, when he’d been in solitary because he’d been caught drumming on the table during class a few too many times. They hadn’t liked his excuse that he had ADHD, and it was impossible for him to hold still, sir, so they’d sent him to the ‘brig’, a room where he’d ate, shat, slept, and done school for a whole month, alone. 

He was bored out of his mind. He’d even started reading the Bible in his room, provided by the Gideon foundation, of course. Then he’d gotten to the part in Leviticus about homosexuality and thrown the thing on the floor. He hadn’t picked it back up again. Those verses were still actively ruining his life, four thousand years later, after all, the last thing he needed was to read them in a book that probably wasn’t even real. He’d never been a believer in faith. Believe what you can see and touch, not the metaphysical, that had always been Tony’s theory. 

Being alone this long had forced a lot of introspection. What would people miss about Tony DiNozzo if he died? His frat brothers would miss his party days, his reputation as a boozer and a chick magnet. But what would people miss about the real Tony DiNozzo? 

Then he’d come to a conclusion. Nothing. There was nothing about the real Tony DiNozzo that people would miss. There was nothing about him to like. He was a womanizing piece of shit who cared too much about what he looked like, what his car was like, what his reputation was- and not enough about the people around him. He didn’t even try. And that was the problem. 

Sure, he could tell you about the cold hard facts, things he’d observed about McGee and Kate, things he’d observed about Gibbs. But he’d never bothered to get to know them on a personal level, never bothered to make friends with them. He’d never bothered to show them that he cared about them beyond working with them. Why hadn’t he done that? Why had he been such a selfish prick? 

Why wasn’t he going to change? He already knew he wasn’t, could feel it in his bones, like the crushing self-hatred that beat him down and drove him to the bottle on days when he didn’t go to the office to get extra work in. He knew he wasn’t going to change, that he couldn’t afford to. It would bring too many questions, that Kate would wonder what he was doing, why he was doing it. He couldn’t do that. There would be too many people watching him, digging into him. He didn’t want that, couldn’t afford that. So he wasn’t going to change, even though he needed to, even though he wanted to. It burned, like swallowing whiskey straight. 

He coughed at last, a body-wracking thing that sent him into shakes. He was still healing and his lungs liked to remind him of that at every possible moment, that he still wasn’t better. The nurse smiled at him in sympathy, rubbing his back. She waited until the coughing fit had subsided before handing him a glass of water. “You’re getting better,” she reassured. “It took you longer to start coughing that time. That’s a good thing. I’ll let you get some rest now. You’ll be out of here before you know it.” 

He nodded, leaning back against the bed and sighing. Out of here before he knew it. Sure. Right now, it felt like he was never going to get out of this hospital. He hoped that he would, but hope only went so far. Closing his eyes, he went back to his introspection. Time to hate himself again. 


End file.
